That's the key for many, if not most contributors to this forum. As we age, stretching to build/ retain flexibility, and exercises to build/ retain core strength are important for day-to-day existence as well as our ability to continue with high energy sports. If that means we can no longer run 9.6 100 meters, so be it!

The Wagnerian members of the left wing chorus have quite exploded a few peoples heads recently. They seem to have forgotten there are gentler, more soothing instruments which play in the orchestra! ( )

You stated that peer reviewed research by your quoted 'expert' sources had proven that aerobic training does more harm than good.

Cat 1 professional cyclists use aerobic methods as part of their training sessions.

Therefore, your training methods are, according to your 'proven' experts superior. Consequently, you should be able to beat them! Simple!

Incidentally, you would find that professional cyclists, far from just being 'jocks', are at least as well informed as you. Probably more so, since winning or loosing depends on it.

I'm sure that serious cyclists know far more than I, but:

• The really competitive ones are genetic and psychological outliers (i.e., they live outside the bell curve in both physiological capability and psychological motivation.) They demonstrate what's possible, not what's normal.

• Champions in any endeavor are mostly genetic outliers. For example, an expert -- or just about anybody who has read the criterion -- can tell a kid, "Make a muscle", hold his thumb up to the kid's bicep, and quite accurately inform him right then and there whether he is physiologically capable of becoming a bodybuilding contender. That potential depends almost totally on his unchangeable genetic ratio of muscle length to tendon length, measured just that easily. Without the right ratio, the most motivated gym freak on the planet is not going to compete at high levels. Comparable genetic potential filters apply for most top level athletes (and chess players, singers ... savants in general). Those aren't the people addressed in one-liner summaries of bell curve findings.

• The list of one-liners above represents statistical norms (what most people should expect), and doesn't have the space to include the physiology behind the findings.

• Leading athletes and trainers got their knowledge from the research, with some, but few, exceptions based mostly on individual anomalies or previously undiscovered broader facts. Consider the Fosbury Flop, for example.

• HOWEVER, the bell curve is not a valid excuse for us to ignore the one-liners. The medical reasons LSD cardio/aerobics to the exclusion of much more strenuous exercise degrades our bodies apply to just about anybody. If LSD was the only training Lance Armstrong ever did, just about any fit dude who runs intervals could pedal Lance’s doors off and he’d get slower .. and slower … and slower as his oxygen delivery capacity atrophied from disuse. The mantra of cardio buffs everywhere is to stay in that sleepy, BORING, easy, fat-burning zone; read your book or chat with Sally on the next machine and don’t DARE do any huffing and puffing. That fat guy doing intervals on the elliptical gets more benefit and does less harm in a few minutes than the babes reading Cosmo on their ellipticals do all week.

• It was once thought, and was the founding principle of LSD training and the aerobics fad, that the only way to develop the solid aerobic base upon which to build running superiority was to crank out tons of boring LSD to the exclusion of higher intensity exercise. Roger Bannister disproved that rumor in 1954, but it took decades for his example to break down its momentum in the public’s eye. Physiologists now know -- unless they changed their minds again “yesterday”, so to speak -- that high intensity (anaerobic) interval training (HIIT) does not preclude or reverse LSD training but in fact does a great job of developing the cellular physiology and chemistry of both aerobic and anaerobic pathways.

• HIIT also builds up our heart’s pumping capacity, unlike LSD which diminishes it by telling our body we don’t need it, leading to cardiovascular insufficiency right when we need it most to shovel that driveway, tote that bale, or lift that pudgy grandkid.

• LSD teaches our bodies to burn sugar and conserve fat, consumes muscle rather than building it, and burns calories only on the treadmill rather than all day and into the night … all just the opposite of what we want and what HIIT does.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the practical and medical advantages of HIIT over LSD.

Can you SEE why I condense stuff so much, at the risk and sometimes the cost of clarity, accuracy, and specificity?

+1 for chocolate milk. The Germans were about to add chocolate at the bottom of the food pyramid (just above beer) when they remembered that (a) the food pyramid was an Egytian - US American invention, and (b) nobody really cared about it, anyway.

In your 40's you worry like blazes that you are 'losing it', and push like heck to prove you are not! (It seems to work.)

In your 50's and especially your 60's you are quite quite pleased that you can still 'turn it on' if you want to. (While grudgingly admitting to just a little 'drop off.')

In your 70's you are really happy because a) people don't expect too much and they feel mortified if you make the effort and successfully match them. b) because you can target those 10 to 15 years younger who are worrying about their 'drop off', and whop their a****s. (Immense satisfaction if successful, and no real loss if not since you can play the old age card, and lay it on with a trowel.)

In the 80's and 90's which I look forward to, (provided I don't get locked up for absent mindedly walking down town without my pants on) I'll be laughing like a drain at all the silly old buffers who stagger around with walking sticks, and who think they are keeping active!

I mean, come on, nobody knows what we are here for, so we might as well see the funny side!

GT,
Loved your assessment. As someone who is 2 years away from the big 6-0, I often laugh at the 40 year olds I hear talking about how they are so old and how they can't do the stuff they used to, or how they used to be great athletes but are now too old -as they stand or sit around watching teenagers play games with balls. (these are not windsurfers, obv.) There is a guy I sometimes sail with who is in his early 70's and is in great shape and rips on the water. I wonder what these 40 year olds would say if they saw him sail.

My Dad used to say that he needed to keep moving to stay one step ahead of "you-know-who" (the guy with the black hoodie and the sickle). It worked for him to the age of 92 when MDS, Parkinson's and a couple of other issues conspired against him. But, he was active almost to the end. It was when he couldn't keep moving that that guy caught up with him.

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